Abandoned
by Ninavask
Summary: Emi and several thousand colonists have been abandoned on a planet in Null-security space when the capsuleer who owns the facility abandoned it after dying. The colonists have been isolated and are desperate to survive, until one day a ship is sighted in orbit. Gold Medalist of the YC 120 New Eden Capsuleer Writing Contest - Prose Category.


**Abandoned**

Emi crept through the underbrush as quietly as she could. Each breath was slow, and careful as she took a knee in the grass besides one of the tall, twisted, trees of the woods. She watched her target graze placidly and held back a sigh of relief. It had not heard her.

Only twenty meters away the deer snuffled at the grass and chewed noisily. It took another step forward as Emi raised the rifle to her shoulder and closed one eye. She peered down the sights and adjusted her aim. Making certain the bright red 'X' was clearly placed over the creature's chest.

One of the other hunters had explained to her you did not hunt deer by aiming for their head. There was too much bone, and their skulls too hard. There was always a risk with projectile rifles that the bullet would deflect. Not to mention deer kept moving their head about as they ate so a head shot was just as likely to miss as anything, and even less likely to kill for certain with the rounds they had available. At least until you were using rifles that really had no purpose in being used for hunting.

"Besides," Jamon had said, "if you aim for the head you risk destroying the horns. We can use those."

The deer lifted its head sharply and all four of it's strangely alien ears began to twitch and panned in her direction. Searching for the source of whatever sound had drawn it's attention.

At the sight of the sudden attention Emi panicked and she squeezed the trigger. She did not want to risk the deer spooking and running off.

At the same time a sound struck her. So impossibly loud it felt like a physical blow to the back of her head. So much louder than her rifle that she never even heard the weapon go off. Even as she threw up both of her hands to protect her ears and let the weapon fall to the ground.

Not that her hands did any good to protect her from the sound.

Emi was surprised to discover she had been screaming when she came to. She was even more surprised to find herself curled up on the ground, and not nearly as dead as she had expected.

The sound of her own voice was a small and distant thing to her. Much less than the deafening ringing in her ears. Or even the distant rumble that reverberated in her chest. Like a great rockfall or terrible fire.

When Emi finally opened her eyes she had half expected to find the forest, and herself, on fire. Expecting some kind of thermal bomb having gone off just far enough away to not have killed her. Any second now she would begin to feel the flames eating at her bones.

Someone had finally come to finish the job.

When her eyes did open, Emi did not see fire all about her as she had expected. She just saw grass, trees, and the tall brush she had been crouched behind to hide from the deer. All looked as if nothing was amiss. Save for her rifle pressed into the ground beneath her body.

There was no sign of the deer and, indeed, no sign that Emi had ever even shot it. When she sat up she found the clearing it had been grazing in was empty. Not even a drop of blood amongst the grass. Although upon closer inspection she found there was a decently sized hole in a tree across the clearing.

Emi cursed, and once more she barely heard her own voice. The sound was lost amidst the tinny ringing in her ears, and the deep bass rumble that she felt more than heard.

Whatever was happening, whatever was causing that sound, Emi knew she could not stay in the woods. There was no point continuing to hunt, as all the animals would be fleeing for the hills. Away from the source of the sound as fast as their legs could carry them.

Emi was trying to process just what the sound could be, but no luck. A bomb detonating wouldn't last this long, and she doubted there was some undiscovered volcano in the area. When the colony had been set up six years ago they had been specifically set in a location far from active volcanos or estimated fault lines in the crust.

Furthermore if she had been close enough to an eruption to hear _that_ Emi was certain she'd be dead already. The forest would be in flames and she would be well on her way to becoming ash. No something else had happened, and she needed to get back to the village to find out precisely what.

Emi scooped up her rifle and slung it over her shoulder, then set off at a run along the game trail she had followed while hunting the deer. Whereas before she had crept along the trail and tried to disturb nothing, now she ran full tilt. Slapping stunted tree limbs and arching bushes aside. She used the butt of her rifle to force aside a limb from a particularly large and thorny shrub as she ran. Lest the thick barbs catch her and cause even more injury.

By the time she had reached the edge of the timber, Emi was beyond winded. All she wanted to do was collapse to the ground and catch her breath, but a genuine terror at what might have happened kept her going as she charged out into open sunlight.

Emi was moderately surprised to still see the village all in one piece. Still right where she had left it on the opposite side of the treeless valley floor. She had decided to settle on the working theory of a bomb having been dropped on what little remained of the colony. The pirates from five years back having finally come to finish the job, or maybe someone new who just didn't want to have to deal with the mouths to feed.

Whatever it was, the sight of the village in one piece was almost enough to knock her off her feet and cry with relief. It still clung to the opposite side of the valley. Shaded by a rocky cliff face that jutted out from the western end of the valley. Sunlight gleamed off the rock and beneath its shadow stone and wooden structures nestled in like some kind of shanty town. All pressed up together between the much more secure prefabricated housing that had only been partially deployed before the colony had been "destroyed".

It was all there. Just as depressingly run down as ever. Not a fire to be seen, nor any fresh craters, but Emi could still see people bustling about in a panic. Men and women running towards the town from the fields. Makeshift farming implements of pipes and scrap left abandoned in their field. Everyone running to shelter in the village, shadowed beneath the cliff atop which the processor facility stood. Like a grim sentinel of twisted and broken metal. Still blackened, even after so many years, from the fires that had gutted it.  
That had been a day that still haunted the survivor's dreams. The day their only lifeline, their only connection at all to the rest of the galaxy, had ceased to exist. And no one even knew really why. The what was simple, but the why was far harder to discover. Every time someone looked at the cliff face they knew exactly what had happened. And everyone knew just what kind of people had caused their capsuleers.

"Fucking Capsuleers." Emi herself growled as she stared at the ruins, then turned her eyes skyward. That was when she saw it.

A great red streak was making its way across the sky. The smokey tail twisting across the sky for hundreds of kilometers. Emi was surprised that a chunk of debris had managed to maintain its orbit for so long. Most of the starship refuse had fallen within the first year. The impacts all falling along roughly the same latitude that the colonies had been placed.

Thankfully this impactor seemed to aim somewhere far to the east. It would probably impact somewhere in the eastern oceans. Well past where the planetary command center had been initially landed.

Although judging from the brightness the piece of debris was quite large and as Emi watched it she theorized maybe it would make landfall near the command center itself. It was slowing rapidly as it fell. The brilliant ball of flame that enveloped it growing larger and larger as it descended and slowed.

It wasn't until the object burst from it's superheated reentry flame that Emi realized something was off about how it fell. It was slowing far too much and that sound was only getting louder. The brilliant superheated gases were left behind as a strange teardrop shaped object rocketed on ahead of it. Leaving behind a luminous blue contrail as the clouds behind it lost their fire.

Emi's heart skipped a beat when she recognized the blue line that traced across the sky behind the object as engine trails.

That was not a piece of debris, or even a bolide, Emi realized with wonder. It was a shuttlecraft. A massive landing craft roughly the size of a small cruiser. It wasn't falling out of the sky either, but descending in a controlled manner towards the east. It had just hit the lower atmosphere and decelerated just enough that it's shielding was no longer superheating the atmosphere around it.

The sound Emi had heard earlier must have been when the ship had passed directly overhead some eighty kilometers up. Right as it had begun entry into the planets denser atmosphere levels.

Emi screamed with excitement and took off at a dead run for the village once more. No longer aware of her own exhaustion as she screamed with all consuming glee. Not to anyone in particular, but she had to say the words. She had to let someone know.

"Rescue! It's a rescue ship! We're saved!" Emi screamed. Over and over again as she ran up the dirt tracks that accounted for "roads" leading to and from the fields. She was still screaming when she passed beneath the shadow of the cliffside and into the village itself. She continued to scream and shout with joy as she went, but her voice just joined those of a hundred other voices as she reached the village center.

The main prefabricated building of the colony had been intended as a warehouse. Only after the destruction of the processing plant it had instead become the administrator's office. Being the largest and most completely deployed structure other than the processor facility, it had access solar power and backup generators. As well as more than enough space to shelter half the town at first.

Now the warehouse was where ostensibly the village council, really just the most senior member of the colony including the processing center foreman, gathered to discuss how to stay alive. And how to try and get a distress signal out. As well as where they kept as much salvageable tech as could be recovered from the processor. And the various workshops to try and repair the tech.

Outfront of the building the five council members were trying to speak but most of the people were too busy screaming and shouting for them to be heard. Instead religating to gestures and trying, in vain, to calm everyone down.

It wasn't until the processor foreman was handed a megaphone and shouted into it for silence that, finally, did some semblance of quiet start to take over.

"The Council is well aware of the ship we have seen," the foreman said. His voice strained, and pleading with the people to be patient. "Communications is working to reach out to them. Until then we need everyone to calm down and return to your homes." The foreman emphasised his words with raised hands, but none of the crowd listened.

"When can we go home?" A gallentean woman from the front shouted up at the councilor.

"Are we sure the ship isn't pirates?" Said a deteis man just beside her.

"What if they don't come for us?" Called a Khanid from further back in the crowd. Dressed in the green cover alls of one of the farmers. Soon enough the shouting had begun again, dozens of voices all overlapping at once.

"Everyone, please!" The foreman shouted into his megaphone. When that did not work his brow furrowed and he placed the microphone in the receiver until the machine began to squeal. The megaphone shrieked and its piercing wail echoed across the valley, drowning out the other voices and causing many nearest the foreman to cover their ears and cry out in pain. Finally however the voices trailed off and everything was still once again. Save for the distant fading rumble of the starship's engines burning through atmosphere.

The foreman return the megaphone mic to his mouth.

"We are doing the best we can. Our shortwave communications should be working, and we're trying to get in touch with the PCC as well. I beg of you, all of you, please be patient." This time, blessedly, the plea did not fall on deaf ears. And though the crowd did not disperse in its entirety, some did depart. Making their way to their homes to fetch loved ones, or hunker down and wait for news.

Carefully Emi made her way through the crowd and towards the administrative building. She squeezed her way past arguing villager or hushed conversations. Discussions ranging the whole gambit from praising god for their rescue, and worried whispers on whether the ship belonged to slavers or not. It wasn't until Emi had just about reached the administrative building that the foreman took note of her and rushed toward the crowd to meet her.

"Emi! Thank God. I was wondering where you were." He said and Emi burst from the crowd and embraced her father in a tight hug.

"I was out hunting when I heard the explosion," Emi said breathlessly. "I feared the worst father."

"I did to sweetheart," her father said as he embraced her. "Come." He added and broke the embrace to usher Emi into the administrative building itself. The other members of the council already having disappeared inside.

Emi's father all but dragged her towards the communications center once through the open doors to the structures offices.

"What's going on? Did we get in contact yet?" Emi asked and her father shook his head.

"Not yet sweetheart, James is working on it though." He said, then turned to a dark skinned brutor working at a communications desk.

"Anything?" He asked but the man was already shaking his head.

"I don't know what's going on out east, but the relay stations are having trouble getting through. Station three can barely hear us and they are saying it's worse out east by the PCC. Even with line of sight our transmitter is too weak to reach the ship now." The brutor said.

"Keep trying, if that's a rescue party we need them to hear us."

"Any of the flyboys recognize it, dad?" Emi asked. This time it was her father's turn to shake his head.

"No. Some of them wanted to say it looked like a Purifier frigate but who'd be stupid enough to try and land with a stealth bomber. It's far too big for that anyway. No it's a dropship of some kind, cargo hauler we think. Not sure whose. Maybe a newer model. Maybe a… scavenger or… who knows." Her father said with a shrug. And Emi left unsaid the other alternative that her father had avoided.

It was just as likely the ship was actually pirates. Blood Raiders or.. .god forbid. Sansha's Nation.

"Did anyone see what launched it? That might help." Emi asked.

"Nothing. No one picked up a warp signature either. Then again, our systems are so fried… who knows. Maybe someone at the PCC knows better."

Emi bit her lip as she considered. She'd been so excited at the simple prospect of rescue, she hadn't decided to consider just how difficult it would be to tell any ship that they were here.

With the main resource processor destroyed all orbital communications had been rendered non-existent. Even the built in emergency communications hadn't been able to get an alert off. Every colony structure had a communication system that could reach orbit. Normally the communications would be routed through a customs office in space. That customs office would then be able to route any and all messages through the fluid router network to the Servant Sisters of Eve or whatever Empire happened to be able to listen for a distress call.

Unfortunately the customers office had been destroyed in the opening stages of whatever fire fight had ended in an orbital bombardment. The bastard capsuleers who had even installed these colonies hadn't even bothered to come back and try again when no one was here. Let alone to bother to search for survivors.

And they had survived. By the skin of their teeth, but they had somehow managed it. The planet was a temperate world. Baseline standard for habitability. Reasonable oxygen, reasonable temperatures. Even reasonable seasons. Although the planetary year was significantly larger than the standard. While the winters were surprisingly brief.

Those long summers had been a blessing that first year. Emi didn't know whether the pirates who had bombarded the facilities actually cared whether they had killed anyone down here or not. According to all reports the "bombardment" had only been one shot at each location. 1400mm phased plasma had rained down like the fingers of God himself. Hitting each facility precisely and obliterating it.

They had thanked god the bastards firing hadn't been using nuclear rounds.

Here are the processor they had been lucky. The cliff face had shielded most of the habitation village from the impact. It had come from just the right angle that the explosion had rained debris down all around, but had not struck them. It had snapped the cliff face in two however and a rockslide had buried some of the structures that had landed lower in the valley.

According to stories Emi had heard they had gotten off lucky. One of the extractors to the north had been hit and the resulting explosion had apparently leveled a quarter of a kilometer of ground around it. Killing everyone.

The launchpad had been the only place a serious effort had been made. Two full volleys from a battleship had struck there. According to scouts the PPC had sent the launchpad had been replaced by a smoking crater and shattered rock.

The PPC had not fared much better. The main structure itself had been obliterated with a single shot, the same as everywhere else. However miraculously although most of it had been destroyed some of the structure had managed to survive, and the structure itself had contained the blast.

Emi had overheard some of the processor employees, who claimed to have once served on a capsuleer starship, say the great variation was because most starship rounds weren't designed for orbital bombardment. The fact the rounds had even hit the ground had genuinely surprised the men apparently. Since most rounds fired by anything smaller than a dreadnought, or from specialized frigate sized guns, couldn't survive significant atmospheres. Always burning away or exploding harmlessly in lower atmosphere.

Whatever the case it had taken months for communication with the other colonies to be established. The relay links that passed from structure to structure on the surface were a series of short-wave communication towers. Those had been knocked out when the PPC had been destroyed, but teams of engineers had found out how to refit them. Turn them into broadcast towers for radio communication.

It was nearly 700 kilometers from the PPC to their little processing plant. So every message sent had to pass through twelve different retrofitted broadcasting station to even reach the PPC.

By the time the communications had been back up and running, three whole months, a plan of action had already been enacted by Emi's father. They would begin to farm.

That had not been an easy process. However some of the food stores had seeded plants, and a few men and women claimed to have worked at an agricultural plant prior to signing on for colony work. Within another two months they had made fields and begun to grow food.

When the PPC had finally managed to make contact, through a scouting team of former security officers, they had been already completing their first harvest. This scouting team had told them about the relay towers, and had helped them salvage enough materials to make their own makeshift broadcasting station.

Since then it had simply become a matter of trying to survive. Waiting and hoping rescue would some day come.

Not everyone had been able to wait so long. Two years ago, just after a particularly long winter, one of the other processor sites had stopped making frequent communication with the PPC. A scouting team had discovered that everyone had either committed suicide, or had murdered one another. No one had been sure which.

The suicide rate here had been kept blessedly low. Thanks in part, Emi decided, to her father's sermons. Her father was not a priest of the Amarr faith, but he had studied theology during his youth. And since then he had always kept several choice books of the amarr scriptures.

Every third day of the week her father would read excerpts from the book to the village. At least to those who had wanted to hear it. Her father had never forced anyone to listen, but by the end of the second year the sermons had become a village wide event. Everyone listened. The Gallente, the Minmatar, and even the Caldari. The crew that had made up the colony had been wildly diverse. One of the many "perks" of being hired to crew a capsuleer owned colony.

Yet somehow it had just… worked. The sermons had given people comfort, and the work had kept them all focused. When the administrators at the PPC had started collecting census reports they had been the only ones to show no losses of life over time.

Emi was drawn out of her thoughts by an alarmed shout from the communications desk. Startled she shook away her distraction and glanced to her father. At first she had thought the communications tech, James, had been screaming in alarm. But she realized it was in joy as she saw the man practically dance around his terminal.

"What happened?" Emi asked her father, and for a moment he did not answer. A stunned expression on his face. Eyes wide and jaw slack.

"Dad?" Emi demanded and she elbowed him to try and wake him from his stupor. He blustered in surprise and his mouth worked for a moment. Searching for words to say.

Finally he managed to speak.

"It's… it's rescue." He said, and Emi watched her father wet his dry lips and repeat the words. As if he couldn't believe them himself.

"They're coming to rescue us." He said again. He whispered the words, almost too soft to heart. As if the words themselves had some divine power.

James, on the other hand, was not so quiet. The brutor laughed and danced and cheered around his terminal. When he saw Emi looking at him, and recognized the confusion, he ran over and grabbed her arm then dragged her to the terminal.

"It wasn't a verbal message, but a system wide text code." He said and jabbed a finger against the terminal screen. Underlining the message, which was repeating once every thirty seconds on the otherwise blank screen.

 _[17:31:25] We have found you, We are coming to save you._

 _[17:31:55] We have found you, We are coming to save you._

 _[17:32:25] We have found you, We are coming to save you._

 _[17:32:55] We have found you, We are coming to save you._

 _[17:33:25] We have found…_

The message continued on and on and on. Every thirty seconds. There was no broadcaster code, the system wasn't robust enough to actually connect to any fluid router channels. The broadcaster must have been sending the message out on literally every frequency for it to be showing up.

"Have… have you responded?" Emi asked and James' celebration halted for a moment. The brutor's eyes going wide as he quickly elbowed Emi out of the way and bent over his terminal keypad.

Quickly he set up a broadcast at maximum strength from their system. As strong as it would go in hopes to reach the contact. Using the same format James entered the text to be coded and broadcast over every radio frequency he could think of. Then keyed the date release.

 _[17:34:37] This is Processor 4, 721 clicks west of the Planetary Command Center for YHN-3K, Planet VI. We are receiving your message and are requesting rescue._

 _[17:34:55] We have found you, We are co_

The message cut off abruptly mid text Emi blinked then stared at the screen. Waiting for several tense seconds alongside James as the screen remained the same. No more message being broadcast.

"Did… did they move out of range?" Emi asked and James shook his head. The skinny brutor looking more and more agitated as time went on. Until finally a new message appeared.

 _[17:37:25] Processor 4, we have your location. Prepare for uplifting._

 _[17:37:55] Processor 4, we have your location. Prepare for uplifting._

 _[17:38:25] Processor 4, we have your location. Prepare for uplifting._

Beside Emi, James began to cheer.

"They're coming. Oh thank god they're coming to save us." He shouted and he and several others of the crew inside the administrative building ran for the doors to make everyone aware.

Emi, however, felt a sudden weakness in her legs. It felt as if her knees were about to give out as she read those words over, and over, and over again as the message was repeated.

"Prepare for uplifting…" Emi murmured and slowly she glanced over to her father. At some point during the discussion with james he had moved to the exit from the administrative building, which stood wide open. The sounds of revelry reached inside and echoed through the suddenly empty building.

"Dad?" Emi called, but he did not turn. Emi straightened and strode across the room towards the entryway with her father. Adjusting the strap that held her projectile rifle higher on her shoulder.

Her father was not watching the overly excited people outside as they screamed and cheered. Instead his eyes were on the sky.

There was no sign left of the teardrop shaped ship Emi had seen earlier. Save for a massive smoke contrail that showed where it had disappeared beyond the horizon. However a new reentry tail streaked across the sky towards them this time. A small black speck had just accelerated past it's reentry plasma and descended towards them.

The sonic boom of the crafts reentry was a twin to the first one. It proceeded the ship like an explosion, and this time Emi had time to cover her ears and brace herself this time. It was still deafeningly loud and when Emi looked up from having pressed herself to the doorway the ship had grown about the size of her small finger.

"Dad?" Emi asked, and she looked to her father. He was still staring at the ship. As the revelry began anew in the crowds outside, he seemed to be the only one who did not look happy.

"Dad?" Emi repeated with more force and this time she elbowed him in the side hard. "Your scaring me, what's wrong?" She demanded and this time her father noticed her. He shook out of his stupor and turned to regard Emi with watery brown eyes.

"Oh, God, Emi." He moaned, and tears began to fall from his eyes.

"Oh, God, I am so sorry."

"What's wrong, dad?" Emi demanded but he did not answer. Instead before she knew what was happening he had made a grab for the rifle on her shoulder.

Emi cried out in alarm as her father shoved her aside and practically tore the weapon off her shoulder. The rifle strap snapping as she fell to the floor and banged herself on the head.

Stars filled Emi's eyes as she lay in the doorway of the administrative building. The growling roar of the teardrop shaped craft's engines deafening her to all other sounds as the craft passed over head.

When color returned to her vision Emi saw her father had her rifle pressed to his shoulder, and he was aiming it directly at her. The shock of what Emi saw took her a long time to process. The barrel of the gun was almost pressed to her face, and it wavered and shook with her father's sobs.

"Dad," Emi murmured, eyes wide as she stared at the gun, "what are you-" He cut her off. Sobbing as he spoke

"God give me strength. Please, oh great God give me strength." He sobbed and Emi heard the click as her father turned off the safety of the rifle and put his finger over the trigger.

Emi was too shocked for words. She wanted to ask why he was doing this. Why was he going to shoot her. Rescue was finally here and he was just going to… murder her? Right now? After five whole years? Tears began to stream from Emi's eyes as she stared up at her father's own blubbering face.

The roar of the dropship had faded, and the cheers of the crowd could still be heard over it all. None of them paid any mind as they watched the dropship rumble past overhead again. It's engines throttled down significantly as it made to land just outside the village.

"Dad… don't." Emi finally whimpered as the barrel of her rifle continued to shake in her face. "Please." She begged.

Her father continued to cry as he held the rifle and aimed down at her head. Great wracking sobs that shook his whole body and caused the gun to waver violently. He stared back at her, the tears dripping off his chin and staining the faded gray-green jumpsuit her wore. Then finally he shook his head and lowered the rifle.

Before Emi could say anything, before she could even try and ask her father why he could possibly want to kill her, he turned the gun on himself.

"I'm too weak." He moaned. And before Emi could stop him she watched as he put the barrel of the rifle into his mouth, and pulled the trigger with his thumb.

Sound of the shot in such close confines was almost a triplet to the sonic booms from earlier. The sound of it caused Emi to jump as if she had been struck in the face.

The sound was shortly followed by the clatter of the rifle to the floor and the sound of her father's body striking the metal bulkhead of the warehouse floor. Blood spreading in an ever growing pool from each fading beat of his heart.

Then, as Emi stared at her father's lifeless body, it began to snow.

Not real snow, but a gray ash-like snow. It littered itself across everything and soon enough the village outside looked washed out and gray compared to the world beyond. Some of it even drifted through the door and covered Emi.

At first she hardly noticed the stuff. Here eyes too fixed on her father's body, her mind too numb as she tried to process just what had happened in front of her. Then all at once she tried to scream and nothing happened. She tried to curl up into a ball, or alternatively crawl towards her father and pick him up. She desperately wanted what had just happened to have never been, but her limbs did not listen to her.

Her body would not obey.

Instead Emi slowly pushed up off the ground and stood. The unnatural forcefulness of the movement caused her shoulder and back to crack, and she cried out in pain at a cramp her thighs. Yet she stood, straight as a board and tall.

Then against her own free will, Emi turned and strode out of the administrative building. Leaving her father's body right where it had been in the entrance. Unable to go to him, unable to try and shake him awake, Only able to watch in terror as her body moved on it's own and walked through the thin layer of gray dust that littered everything

Just beyond the village the dropship had settled on the hill and lowered a cargo ramp up into its belly. That was where Emi found herself walking. Her eyes wandered desperately and Lily struggled to make her body obey, to move, to do something as tears ran down her face.

There was no one there to greet her at the dropship, and Emi could only watch as her body strode straight up the ramp. Inside the ship she found others from the village, all standing in rows all the way up to the front wall of the ships cargo bay. No one made a single sound, but as Emi strained her eyes to look at those around her she saw tears falling down faces and dripping to the bulkheads below. Eyes looked about frantically but not a single sound could be heard.

As the cargo ramp slowly raised behind them, what had happened finally dawned on Emi. Why her father had been so afraid, why he had aimed the gun at her. The dropships hadn't been rescue, not saviors of any kind.

The dropship belonged to Sansha's Nation.

And now so did each and every one of them.


End file.
